Software Harvesting

“Software is a significant investment for organizations of all sizes and across all sectors and industries (21% of IT spend in 2014), and overall global expenditure on software is set to increase (up 6.4% from 2013 through 2018),” says Gartner *.

There are many scenarios why an organization may have too much software, they include:

over-purchasing due to lack of controls or inaccurately managed procurement

forgotten VMs for which software is still assigned

forgotten VMs spun up in IaaS

projects which have been completed where an application was only needed for a fixed period

licenses issued to users who have changed roles or left the company

software that’s on devices that have been decommissioned

the list goes on…

Whatever the reason, there’s up to a third of software deployed that could be reclaimed and either removed completely or reassigned to other users that need it, hence avoiding the unnecessary purchase of new licenses.

That's software harvesting.

Ensure that SAM processes are in place to provide the necessary usage intelligence and make spare licenses available. Removing unused applications and subscriptions ensures the business has its costs optimized, as freed-up licenses can be pooled for future use. This removes overspend on licenses and IT costs are further reduced through automation.

Use Snow’s SAM Platform to:

Automate Software Removal
Automates removal of applications that are not used as well as those that are installed for a time-limited period.

Create a user-initiated uninstall process​Enables users to take action and uninstall software, cancel subscriptions, and deactivate cloud infrastructure they no longer need.

Pool licenses for reuse
Makes reclaimed licenses available via an app store so ​you can manage the approvals and availability. Procurement requests only become necessary if no licenses are available for reuse.

Involve users in software optimization
Makes your users aware of their consumption and enables them to contribute to how the company uses the software and cloud services it pays for.

Optimize assets
Lower licensing requirements based upon need since users and the projects they work on require distinct levels of access and licensing. Renegotiate vendor agreements to reduce cost.

That´s software harvesting.

Snow SAM platform enables organizations to automate the removal of unused software discovered by Snow License Manager and reduce the burden on the service desk team from manually processing software requests enabling them to focus on core tasks.

Optimize software licensing: identify licensing, subscriptions and cloud infrastructure that is not being used to its full extent, whether it’s reducing a group of Office 365 subscriptions from E5 to E1, or lowering the compute resources on VMs inside of AWS that aren’t needed

Software recycling: reassign unused licenses, subscriptions and cloud resources by creating a license and cloud resource pool for users to request software and compute resources. Snow can place software in quarantine if necessary before being made eligible for reuse.

Decommission unused software: extend savings beyond just software to support and maintenance.

That´s software harvesting.

Optimizes licensing and reduces shelfware

Cost avoidance on buying new software and cloud subscriptions

Savings on unnecessary support and maintenance

A Software Asset Management solution can give you immediate visibility of unused and underutilized applications, subscriptions and cloud resources and calculate your exposure. With Snow’s SAM platform you can reclaim this software and make immediate savings and establish a license and cloud resource pool to reuse applications, subscriptions and cloud infrastructure. Also, you can remove an application entirely and stop paying support and maintenance. Either way you are set to make substantial savings with software harvesting.